He had caught the Sheriff’s radio from his own scanner and rushed out of the office and driven to Timberline. He’d pulled up the driveway and seen the sheriff’s cars and uniformed men standing at the Goods’ front door. He’d spotted Quentin Collier grim-faced look as he got out of his car.
Quentin had stopped him. “You don’t want to go in there Miles.”
“What do you mean?” Miles said.
“Just what I said.”
“Willis and I went to school together. What happened, Quentin?” Miles asked. The Goods’ front door was open. Miles saw bloody footprints on a new white carpet. He turned and looked inside the garage, its door open. He saw the bodies of the children lying on the garage floor, their skulls smashed. He was violently ill and ran back toward his car to be sick in the snow. He didn’t go inside the Goods’ house after that. He simply took notes on what T.C. McCauley gave him about the murders. It had been, up until now, the worst day of his life.
Miles began to laugh uncontrollably. The sound of his hysterical laughter was horrible even to himself, but he couldn’t stop. He finally stopped laughing and looked behind him and saw a set of new black-handled kitchen knives, nested in a block of wood and sitting on a huge marble-topped island behind him. He turned and grabbed one of the knives, sliding it out of its wooden nest. He put his right hand down in front of him, palm down and was about to plunge a boning knife into his hand, thinking it would wake him from this long nightmare.
“It’s all our fault,” Crouchback said again. He was sitting on the doctor’s sofa. They had been ignoring him as they’d prepared to leave the house. Poole and his wife had carried things out to their car. Patty Tyson had been asked to watch Poole’s little daughter. Patty had sat across the room from the old scientist, tired of his blathering on about some protein and talking to himself until he’d fallen asleep, his pajama top open at the chest and exposing a sea of coarse white chest hair.
The Pooles’ little girl was oblivious to all of it: the old, seemingly crazy man, the terrified look on her mother’s face as she trooped down from the upstairs bedrooms with bags of clothes, or her father’s peregrinations around the house gathering improvised weapons. The weapons, Marvin knew, would be useful in their journey to what they all hoped would be a Howler-free zone, somewhere west of Sacramento.
They’d turned off CNN because the doctor’s wife had broken down as she watched the TV. The news channel showed live footage shot from a police helicopter in San Diego. The camera had caught two Highway Patrol officers battling Howlers on the parking lot of a Target, firing their shotguns at close range, their patrol car ringed by hundreds of Howlers. The helicopter had hovered close. They could hear shots coming from the police helicopter as the police chopper’s crew tried to help, flying closer and closer, in a brave attempt to rescue the two battling officers. But the two Highway Patrolmen were overrun and brutally killed, all shown live. They’d seen them disappear into the horrible mob of Howlers that tore them to pieces, as if they’d been made of something flimsy, rather than flesh and bone.
Patty was reloading her sidearm in the now ice cold living room when Crouchback opened his eyes. She thought that the old man was going to start his crazy harangue up again. She glanced across at him, taking her eyes off her revolver, and noticed Crouchback’s face looked different. His expression seemed odd, his flabby cheeks rubbery; his look vacant, but his blue eyes were intense, savage. Patty’s fingers stopped working the bullet into the pistol’s chamber. It fell from her hand and dropped down on the coffee table with the others.
“You okay?” Patty said. “Mr. Crouchback?”
The old man looked up at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. She saw a bit of spit emerge from his lips and run down his chin.
“Doctor! Doctor Poole!” Patty stood up and fumbled with the bullet she’d dropped on the coffee table, picking it up by its brass end. A panic filled her and her hand shook. She dropped the bullet a second time. An uncontrollable physical terror passed through her. She wanted to run from the room. She tried everything she could to stop shaking. She saw her hand holding the pistol; it was shaking horribly. She attempted to pick up another bullet and bring it toward the revolver’s open cylinder.
“Doctor Poole!” she heard herself yelling.
Crouchback stood up. A giant, filthy gob of spit hung off his lower lip. The spit—like white glue—stretched out, but failed to fall away from his lower lip. Patty’s screaming frightened the little girl, sitting across the living room.
“Vivian, honey.” Poole’s daughter was staring at her. She’d been playing with her Barbie doll quietly. The doctor had told Patty that his daughter had been ill with the flu for two days and would normally have been a bundle of energy. The child’s face looked pale; she’d been very quiet all the time Patty had been watching her. Now she was frightened by Patty yelling, and by the strange look on Crouchback’s face.
“Honey, I want you to go find your daddy, can you do that?” Patty said in as calm a voice as she could muster. She picked up another bullet, glancing down quickly at the shells on the coffee table. Two loaded, she thought.
“Daddy?” Poole’s daughter asked.
“Yes, honey,” Patty said.
The little girl, only nine, put down her Barbie doll and stood up. Patty picked up another bullet and slid it into the cylinder. Three. She watched the little girl cross slowly in front of Crouchback, who hadn’t moved since he’d stood up from the couch. The long ribbon of silver-white looking saliva had stretched further, hanging down from Crouchback’s slightly open mouth, almost reaching his crotch.
Four.
Crouchback grunted slightly as if he were trying to clear his voice. He turned his head slowly and seemed to track the girl as she walked by him.
“Mr. Crouchback?” Patty said. “Mr. Crouchback, are you all right?”
“Shoot him,” Poole said. The doctor had stopped in the foyer, the front door open behind him. He was holding a box of food and had just come out of the kitchen. “Shoot him—please. Now.”
“Vivian, I want you to come to me,” Patty said. The little girl stopped. She turned and looked at the ribbon of saliva swinging in the air, still hanging from Crouchback’s mouth.
“Vivian, do what she says.” Marvin said. He put the box down. His wife came up behind him and glanced into the living room, and then screamed.
Crouchback grabbed the girl by the hair and was lifting her up and shaking her at the same time, so that her body looked like an over-sized marionette. The girl, because he’d lifted her, was between Crouchback’s head and Patty’s line of fire. She’d learnt on the long ski run that the things wouldn’t die unless you hit them in the head. She watched helplessly as the thing threw the girl across the room by her hair, and against the rock fireplace.
Crouchback, free of the little girl, sprung at Patty. She fired until the pistol clicked empty, watching the bullets smack into Crouchback’s twisted and howling wide-open mouth. The gunshots tore off a chunk from the back of the old man’s skull and he crumpled, still grunting, but now lying on top of Patty, pinning her to the couch. His body pressed down on her. The gob of Crouchback’s warm spit hit her across the face, along with bits of Crouchback’s shattered front teeth and gums. The man was bleeding out on her through his mouth. She finally managed to lift him off her. Two black-ringed bullet holes from the close-quarter blasts were stamped on Crouchback’s face.
Patty stood up and wiped her wet face. She heard screaming and looked up and saw Dr. Poole and his wife fighting with two Howlers—just children, no older than 16. The couple was trying to close the front door on them. One of the Howlers had Poole’s wife by the ankle. They kept closing the big heavy front door on the child-Howler’s hand until it was severed at the wrist. Finally the two were able to close and lock the front door behind them. Outside the Howlers began to call; their loud shrieking was sure to attract more of them, Patty knew. She looked for Vivian and saw the little girl’s body lying in front of the tall stone fireplace. She was dead.